[Plaverda]

Hi,

As the post states I am a total newbie and am ready to enter into the world that is XBMC. I have never owned a PC, only Apple Mac's in my 37 years on planet earth. The reason being I am a graphic designer, so have never needed to drift from apple.

Recently I have been busy ripping all of my music to various HD's around the house. This has taken an age because of the amount of them. To ensure I only need do it once, I have encoded everything as lossless. Next will be all my DVDs then Blu Rays. But first I need the storage space.

I've been looking at lots of NAS drives, with Synology being my preferred route but recently I have been giving more thought to building my own unraid server, as it seems to make a lot more sense moving forwards. I am also planning on stopping buying blu rays and renting/ripping them (as any house only has so much space for cardboard boxes!).

I will be using the NAS for only:
- audio
- films
- photos

Every computer, laptop, tablet and phone in the household is from apple. So the NAS will need to serve them, but primarily serve the content only. I'll then probably purchase a couple of ASrock vision 3d for the living room and bedroom.

Being a graphic designers I am not technically knowledgable, but I do like to get my hands dirty.

I've been looking around and lurking and reading as much as possible. The following video I found on YouTube, seems quite helpful and even has good eye candy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA9AKLOVO...ata_player would something like the NAS they have built be a pretty good place to starts, especially if i fill it full of WD Green 3Tb's?

Any help gratefull received.

[tboggie]

You can build a simple unraid box which will feed your xbmc clients and apple devices. I run a similar setup

The components below will do the job but you can spend more on MB & CPU if required

Motherboard - Asus M5A78L-M LX V2 - £45
CPU - AMD Sempron 145 OEM Processor - £27
RAM - Corsair 4GB(2x2GB) - £35
PSU - Corsair 500W - £50
CASE - Fractal Design Define R4 - £77
Unraid Licence - £45

Lastly, since you have no problem getting your hands dirty, you can save some money by building two mini itx xbmc boxes (living room and bedroom) or you could check out the Intel NUC Core i3(add OS, ram & ssd)

[GortWillSaveUs]

I agree,...unRaid is pretty simple to stand up.
The backend is Linux,...but it has a GUI interface that is pretty outstanding and simple to understand.
The great thing about unRaid (and the same could be said for other solutions) is that you can start with a few drives, and add more as needed.
The drives don't even have to be the same size, nor from the same vendor (not should they be).

[Richard39]

yes unraid is free up to 6 drives if I remember right(someone can correct me if I wrong) so u can start off small and build up over time with the harddrives, and like gort mentioned don't have to be same size or brand

[nokdim]

unraid is free up to 6 drives if I remember right(someone can correct me if I wrong)

3 drives and under is free see unRaid

[Plaverda]

Thanks guys. I'll need to purchase a license as I have a feeling I am going to need a lot of drives.

I quite the Sharkoon T9 blue, and it's seems good value at £51.

Would an i3 chipset and a Supermicro MBD-X9SCL-F-O (C202) be overkill for the nas?

Depending how I get on with the NAS I would also then consider building the mini XBMC box. But I really need it to have optical out for the quality audio. Silly question but can you add a blu ray drive to the XBMC box that can then rip blu rays and send them to the Nas?

[nokdim]

I run other services on my NAS so I use the CPU and memory for things like SABNZBD, CouchPotato and SickBeard as well as MySQL all under unRaid so having a decent CPU isn't a bad idea.

You can add a blu ray drive to the system and you would have to use a separate program like handbrake to rip them.

Personally I make my XBMC clients small and silent with no drives SSD or blu ray and have 1 machine that I use to rip stuff and store on the NAS.

[thethirdnut]

If you're going to buy the Supermicro mobo I'd also go for an e1220-v2 and ECC RAM too...bad RAM will trash you filesystem...unRAID included.

[gibxxi]

Don't use WD Green drives in a RAID setup, It's ill-advised. The Greens have in-built power-saving features that will attempt to spin down the drives at every opportunity. This will then require you to set about hacking about at the firmware with tools WD provide to turn off the power-saving features so the drives run in a NAS environment which negates the reason you bought Green drives in the first place. Also, Green drives are designed for low usage scenarios. Which is the opposite of what a NAS is all about. Buy the WD-Reds, those series of drives are also low-power but without the settings in firmware that will cause issues in NAS usage, also they are rated for 24/7 usage whereas the Greens are not.

[Dougie Fresh]

Seagate NAS drives are also good. Versus WD-Red get whichever is on sale.

[GortWillSaveUs]

A word of caution,..if you do go with unRaid (I can't speak for the other solution, but it more than likely also applies), don't buy all the same make/model drives.
If you do, there is the potential for the drive(s) to have a problem,..and if one goes,..they all might go south.
Mix it up a bit, and you will be fine.

[Plaverda]

Thanks guys, I've now ordered the first three components:

- Sharkoon T9 Value Blue
- Corsair HX650
- Icy Box IB-555SK Dual Channel Backplane

I just need to read up a little more on my choice of motherboard and CPU. As it seems that having a little more power isn't a bad thing.

I'll then purchase the drives after that, but I will be mixing and matching. I've hard good experiences with Hitachi drives to date, and WDs.

---

Looking at motherboards and chipsets on Amazon, and a few have come up that look like good deals (from the uninitiated point of view).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bulldozer-FX-610...ard+bundle

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-Bulldozer-FX...ard+bundle

Although i am not really sure i know what i am looking for.... help!

[Plaverda]

Well I'm still looking at motherboards and still scratching my head. Any advice greatly received as I want to build a mid level package that will last for a few good years.

[thethirdnut]

I'd still recommend Supermicro mobo. Great build quality, Intel NICs, etc.

[Harro]

I looked at Supermicro board and really liked it but cost wise went with an ASRock H77 Pro4-M LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard cheaper but has stood the test of time and no problems.